No Left Turns

A Note on Trying to Abolish Love

This Mark Steyn note on the sexualization of childhood, indeed, the abolishing of childhood, and sex, sex, sex, is worth reading. It's all irritating, and worse, I must say. Also kind of sad, don't you think? I want to speak in favor of joy and love. Would I could in those few lines that sometimes rivet the mind, and make the heart skip a bit or two! I'll just have to be prosaic about, but I'll still make the attempt, from time to time. We seem way beyond the world that Allan Bloom described a generation ago and we thought that was bad enough. It has become rather boring stuff, hasn't it? Sad and boring, all this sex without love. I think Julie Ponzi's reflections on the death of Elizabeth Taylor, on girls and women and on love, is right on point, and you should read it. She also puts Paglia in her place, not an easy thing to do. So let us remind ourselves of a good song and a maybe of a meeting at night of true minds as she walks in beauty. We shall be redeemed. Never despair.

Discussions - 5 Comments

George

Where is the discussion about boys and men and love? Elizabeth Taylor was an actress...she was very well compensated to play a bunch of roles, and the fact that her personal life was played out in the tabloids was a price she was willing to pay for that billion dollar fortune she amassed while being "unerotic." What I don't get is why the criticism is always about girls and women? Where is the concern for the men and the boys? Where's the criticism of Clark Gable and the fantasy that he sold while being married only a couple of times less than Taylor? What about such in-depth and overwrought analysis of Charlie Sheen and his ilk?

As for A&F and their sexualization of childhood...stop buying their products, cancel your cable, avoid the malls, home school your children, monitor their internet usage (or skip it all together), screen the movies your children and adolescents go to, control the books the take out from the library, buy only clothing from LLBean, Lands End, Brooks Brothers, or Sears. In other words, be responsible parents, and stop whining about the sins and folllies of succeeding generations.

Michael Jackson was a larger force in intellectual property than Elizabeth Taylor.

Now it is an old or public domain truth that sex sells, just how this works is a trade secret, but biologists, poets, economists and political scientists all venture answers, these answers are all intellectual property issues. Everyone is looking for Love to boost aggregate demand. Obama girl, McCain girl. A series of infinite answers, nudges and suggestions.

Rousseau said: "Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man." Well from the moment the first Don Draper stepped unto the stage with a smoke, you just knew things were about to get interesting. In fact MadMen is more about our times than the 1960's. In fact it is also an intellectual property issue.

Rousseau also said: "“The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naive enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society.”

Ah, but what of first man who, having fenced in an idea(claimed intellectual property), said "This is Love"?

Due in part to the internet, the amount of streaming "Sex"+"Love" we can get is boundless, but this is intellectual property and not the thing itself.

"It has become rather boring stuff, hasn't it?" I suppose. But the commercial model of reality TV, is fueled by a great business model, and taps into the desire to destroy the "intellectual property" of those who fenced in X as an idea.

Anymore you have a sort of tragedy of the anti-commons in the sex+love sector of intellectual property. This is what the internet is creating. Another writting of its impact upon society would simply be a fence and not the thing itself.

Steyn's piece is entitled "Pushing Deviancy Up" (clever boy). Always amazing to consider the wide range of sick and twisted stuff that people like Steyn & co. completely ignore, dismiss, minimize, trivialize, or even cheer on (torture - i.e., treatment of captives that the USA had long considered torture when performed by various enemies - for starters), but then get their wholesome, full-cut panties in a bunch over stuff like this. Just odd, to say the least, to see such a narrow focus from the defenders of decency. Has Steyn weighed in on the newly revealed photos of American soldiers posing with and handling corpses, holding their lifeless heads by the hair? I'm guessing he has not.

Don't get me wrong. I don't like to hear about such things as this crap (the bikinis), but it simply ranks close to the very bottom of concerns that might make me toss and turn at night. It's really far down on the list. Above those Soviet lightbulbs, sure, but still far down.

Here's something that's indecent. Mike Jeffries, the CEO and controversial creative mastermind of Abercrombie & Fitch (the company that is marketing the padded bikinis for little girls) - which has, for the last few years been tanking business-wise (see above about my not fretting over them - I guess I'm not the only one who's not buying their cutting-edge fashions) - has somehow been able to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars.

(in '08, for example, A & F's stock plunged 71%, while CEO Jeffries took home nearly $72 million - wonder if the A&F factory workers - or beautiful salespeople, for that matter - could enjoy such an anti-merit arrangement)

"People said we were cynical, that we were sexualizing little girls. But you know what? I still think those are cute underwear for little girls. And I think anybody who gets on a bandwagon about thongs for little girls is crazy. Just crazy! There's so much craziness about sex in this country. It's nuts! I can see getting upset about letting your girl hang out with a bunch of old pervs, but why would you let your girl hang out with a bunch of old pervs?"

Whatever, Mike. I'm not buying your undies or bikinis for my kids and I'm not going to let my kids hang out with any old pervs. For starters, definitely not with any of these guys:
republicansexoffenders dot com/

(on a related note, see ROB's recent post in which he correctly identifies Berlusconi as a conservative yet seems to lament that his loss of power - only somewhat related to his "orgy parties" and sex/rape with an under-age prostitute - "bodes ill for the conservative sweep of Europe." Maybe Silvio could get contrition lessons from Newt and get a fellowship at Heritage or Claremont? He'll need to brush up on his English, I think.)

But seriously, if I came on here and offered evidence that A & F fashions were being manufactured in sweatshops or by kids, would I get more than virtual eye-rolls? Would decency defender Mark Steyn or any NLT blogger post about that? Historically, those kind of concerns would seem to violate the essence of No Left Turns, and so I'm betting they'd be utterly ignored and shrugged off. I mean, LABOR (!!!) rights, international standards or laws - ewwww, yuck.

What's also interesting is that Steyn's link to the bikini story has this:

"Not only is the retailer already known for its near-soft-porn exploitation of teens to sell sex to preadolescents, they’re now selling inadequacy and insecurity, too...
The biggest danger is to the girls who feel they need to compete on bust size before they even start to develop. What this product and its marketing tells them is that their bodies are inadequate and that they need to change their body shape immediately in order to be seen as attractive. Adolescent girls and young women already get bombarded with that message far too much as it is without starting in grade school."

Do I really need to point out that could have come from a wide spectrum of what Rush Limbaugh so charmingly describes as "femiNazis"?

Took me time to read all of the comments, but I really loved the article. It proved to be very useful to me and I am positive to all the commenters right here! It is always good when you can't solely be informed, but additionally engaged! I am sure you had pleasure writing this article. Anyway, in my language, there aren't a lot good supply like this.

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